I plan on placing this recap on a more permanent page in the near future, with accompanying photographs. In the post-Fest surge of enthusiasm, however, it seemed prudent to post the recap itself as soon as I was done writing it.
B-Fest 2004
I haven't written a B-Fest recap in quite some time; after the first couple of years it gets harder to find new ways of describing the sleep-deprived delirium of the festival. With the proliferation of B-Fest diaries out there, there's less incentive to write a recap, since one's fellow fest-goers are likely to cover much the same ground. This year, however, I felt like the number of new faces and broken traditions warranted a report, if only a brief one.
The People:
The
B-Movie Message Board had an extremely strong showing this year. Though Scott and I didn't participate in their gathering at the "official" hotel and evening at the tiki bar, we were greatly impressed at the number of folks who showed up. I certainly didn't meet them all -- days later, I'm finding out about people who attended and whose jokes I probably enjoyed, unaware that they were the real faces behind the screen names. Among those I did meet, or was happy to see again: Marlowe, MegaLemur, Bergerjacques, TelstarMan, HenGrenade, JenGrenade, nameless Ray Schaff (a tireless Stomp Tokyo supporter from way back), and Juniper. I am told that others were there, though I don't recall meeting them. If you did introduce yourself and I don't remember, I do apologize.
Also joining the crowd were friends, and friends of friends: Mark (aka Apostic), Joe of
Opposable Thumb Films, Chris M., the irrepressible Lodore (and really, who would want to repress her?), Andrea, Chad, Brother Ragnarok, Skip, George, Jenny, Jeff, Paul, and Holly. And of course, our most congenial of hosts, Ken "
Jabootu" Begg. As the years go by and Ken continues to perform his unenviable duties as host without complaint, the need to praise him grows ever stronger. Great priest of Jabootu, Ward Against the Cold, Lord of the Five Coolers, Provider of the Tower of Snacks -- I salute you.
Also present was The Warden from
Prison Flicks, who did more standing up and sitting down than an Episcopal congregation, mostly because he was sitting on the aisle, and I was sitting a few seats in on the same row. Normally I try to scrounge up an aisle seat right away for this very reason -- I just can't sit still between films -- but it didn't work that way this year. (I eventually scored an aisle seat a few rows back, but long after I must have annoyed everyone on the row a dozen times.) So, W, to you and your pal who allowed me in and out between every flick, I give thanks.
There are those I have forgotten or whose names I did not learn. This is my standard
mea culpa disclaimer: understand that I do not omit you intentionally, but out of weakness of memory, and from lack of sleep. But how silly of me to try to explain. After all, you were there.
The Show
We arrived at B-Fest somewhat later than usual; by the time we got there we were practically fighting for seats. We later learned the reason: for the first time in its history, B-Fest sold out. Though in the end no one who showed up around 6 was turned away, there were some anxious moments among those who were wait-listed until the reserved tickets turned into no-shows. (Later on there was a "Sold Out" sign at the ticket table, so I assume latecomers were out of luck.) This made for an extremely crowded theater, especially during the early hours of the festival. I don't want to say it was unpleasant, exactly, but it was a bit more raucous than previous festivals, and any more people admitted to that venue under those circumstances would be to invite danger.
Along those same lines, this year was also the first time that the facilities manager felt the need to clamp down on luggage and bedding in the aisles; Ken's beloved cot was dissembled and fire codes were strictly enforced, to the point that one film was delayed until everyone was seated.
I'm getting ahead of things a bit, though. Let's begin at the beginning.
The Brain from Planet Arous
A strong start to the year's show: a familiar film, well-loved for its utter goofiness. It's perfect for B-Fest, as there are plenty of pregnant pauses and riffable material. Scientist Steve March (John Agar!) investigates sporadic, intense levels of radiation emanating from Mystery Mountain. (The crowd's response: to howl "oooo-OOOOO-oooooo!" every time Mystery Mountain is mentioned.) In a cave under the mountain, Steve's sidekick is burned to death and Steve himself is mind-controlled by an immaterial alien brain creature named Gor. Together, Steve and Gor intimidate the world's leaders, blow up airplanes, and put the moves on Steve's girlfriend, Sally (Joyce Meadows).
Robot Jox
For some time I've harbored a fear of this film; I may now confirm that that fear was a healthy one. As '80s science fiction films go,
Robot Jox would make a good doorstop. In a world where natural resource disputes are settled between corporation-states by giant-robot gladiatorial contests, Gary Graham is Achilles, the best robot fighter on Earth. (No points for guessing where his robot will eventually be damaged.) Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson), however, looks to dethrone the retiring Achilles. She just might do it, too, because she was genetically designed and trained since birth to do the job. Part of Athena's training involves toughening her up mentally by saddling her with the worst haircut imaginable, a practice that was doubtlessly pioneered by Achilles himself.
Though it has some interesting ideas (courtesy of screenwriter and modern sci-fi legend Joe Haldeman), the movie is a cluttered, under-budgeted, over-acted mess. The robots look exactly like what they are (stop-motion animated miniatures) and the actors look like they're stunned to be on the set of an actual film instead of in front of a studio audience. In other words,
Robot Jox was a perfect choice for B-Fest.
Beatniks
As Scott was quick to point out, this film could have been great, if they had just thought to include some actual beatniks. Think
Giant Gila Monster without the monster, and imagine Chase Winstead as a teenaged delinquent with a posse of ill-tempered friends. Well, they're supposed to be teenaged, at any rate: I'd be surprised if anyone in this film were under the age of twenty-five. Apparently the main character, Eddy Crane (Tony Travis), learns that it's OK to be a square if you're making good money from the other squares. He tries to divorce himself from his cronies, but the evil "Moon" keeps drawing him deeper and deeper into the criminal life.
The B-Fest crowd prefers to dwell on the facial imperfections of Eddy's new crush, Helen (Joyce Terry), who looks fairly pretty in long shots. As the camera approaches her more closely, however, certain asymmetries become apparent which inspire much screaming from the audience. I try to chide my fellows for their impertinence, reminding them that this woman is likely someone's kindly old grandmother who gives willingly of herself to those less fortunate, but to no avail. I am left to turn my gaze upward and ponder her beatific countenance . . . holy monkey! What a puss!
It is also during this film that some wag inflates a latex condom and sends it wafting into the crowd, to be batted about like a beach ball. I can't say it is a particularly fun game, but it does cast an amusing shadow on the screen as it sailed over our heads.
The Beast With Five Fingers
Doctor Freex
wrote eloquently about this movie in a review that I wished I had read before agreeing to sponsor the film. I've since renounced such regret, however, as the movie was fine fodder for the sharp tongues around me and it was the only example of gothic horror in the entire show. The idea is that there may or may not be a disembodied hand running about, murdering the inhabitants of a house recently owned by a one-handed pianist. Much to the surprise of no one, Peter Lorre is involved.
The fact that the end of the film is played as comedy is a mite confusticatin', but the meandering tempo of the rest of the film calms things down quite a bit. This would later be seen as a good thing, because the next six hours or so is high, high energy stuff.
About this time (or perhaps it was prior to
Beast?), the facilities manager (whose name I didn't quite get) stomps around a little bit, making her presence felt. I actually feel some sympathy for the woman, as B-Fest is about as nightmarish a situation as it gets for someone who must answer to the fire marshal. There is a bit of grumbling, but in the end the changes she asks for aren't too onerous -- for instance, she doesn't even try to enforce the "no food" rule, despite the unbroken line of coolers at the edge of the stage -- and the bad feelings are soon forgotten as the rest of the schedule begins to roll.
Door prizes are given out, including some DVDs we procured at a local retail establishment for the occasion. The piece de resistance of our contributions: the Special Edition DVD of
From Justin to Kelly. The crowd murmurs appreciatively.
The Wizard of Speed and Time
A festival tradition, and hopefully one that will never be broken. (Mike Jittlov, when will this short be available on DVD?
When?) There is much clomping of feet and shouting, and then it all happens again, backwards of course.
Plan Nine From Outer Space
Another festival tradition, and as I have now seen
Plan Nine more times than the number of years Tim Lehnerer has been alive, I retire to the lobby. Well, actually, first I drag an unexpectedly large group of people up to the projection room, where we see the film cans placed lovingly in a dusty corner (oooooh!) and the humble projectors, pumping out reel after reel of cheesy goodness (ahhhh!). Festival organizer Andy Freeberg submits to a few geeky questions, and, when I bring it up, agrees to switch the order of the final two films,
The Big Brawl and
Magnetic Monster. The latter movie was scheduled to be the last film, but at Ken's excellent suggestion, the much more up-tempo
Brawl will now finish off the fest.
With our tour over and much shaking of hands accomplished, the group settles into some comfy chairs downstairs and a game of cards fails to materialize. We are all too busy chatting with one another and checking our e-mail. Joe decides that the wallpaper of the nearby common-use computer desperately needs a Jabootu infusion. Inside the auditorium, there are surely many paper plates hurtling through the air.
When Criswell makes his final prediction, the
weaker more intelligent festival attendees file out and our group files back in, ready for more pain but completely unprepared for what will happen next.
Speaking of Animals in: Monkey Business (short)
The prelude to
Monkey Hustle is this odd short from Paramount, in which monkeys (more properly chimpanzees, which are of course apes) perform various circus and vaudeville acts. Just when you think it's a harmless little trained-animal flick, however, the film's creators animate the chimps' mouths, creating the eerie, not-quite-right effect that they are in fact singing to the music. (Think of it as a primitive precursor to
Cats and Dogs, with about the same level of humor.) The effect on the crowd is pronounced, and not at all unexpected: they scream. A bit later, as the simian performers do acrobatics, someone (probably Skip) gets the idea to yell "Oh-pa!" with every trick.
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this film is its title, which implies that there are
more hideously animated animals on film elsewhere. A bit of Internet research reveals that, in fact, the
Speaking of Animals films were a "popular series," though where the other installments may be found is a bit of a mystery to me at present. Thank goodness.
Monkey Hustle
If you asked attendees which film was most popular at B-Fest, they'd probably mention this film, or the one that follows it. Yaphet Kotto tantalizes viewers with a whiff of respectability and talent, but after a while it's clear that his motivations are quite likely the same as his con-man character's: to hang out with a bunch of pretty women and make some eeeeeasy money. There isn't much of a discernible plot in
Monkey Hustle; it's a slice-of-life film that nominally focuses on the life of a young drummer in a predominantly black Chicago neighborhood. The best part of the location is that it really was shot in Chicago, which really appeals to the locals in the audience. (Huh. So
that's what the city looks like when it's not frozen solid and crusted with salt.)
Though it has an awful lot of heart and an upbeat ending, there's enough crime, violence, and Rudy Ray Moore (resplendent in attire garish enough to make Cher cringe with envy) to cement
Monkey Hustle's cred as a blacksploitation film. There are those who might chide its creators for portraying these Chicago residents as little more than simple-minded criminal hedonists, but I think there are too many layers of feeling and meaning in the film for it to be so easily dismissed. It's colorful, noisy, and funny, and most of us in the crowd love it.
Alice in Wonderland
This is the film I'm most looking forward to, mostly because it has Kristine DeBell in it, and her turn in
The Big Brawl was fairly charming. If you thought she was attractive in Brawl, however, I advise the use of your mightiest hubba-hubba protection for this film. DeBell is Alice, a wistful librarian with a garage mechanic boyfriend and some pent-up sexual issues. What to do? Why, shed one's clothing and go frolicking through the Horny Musical Neighborhood of Make-Believe, of course!
Internet legend has it that
Alice was shot as a hard-core porn movie, but the director decided it worked much better as soft-core, and edited it that way. Demand for the original hard-core footage (which doesn't appear in the version aired at B-Fest, thank goodness) resulted in a cobbled-together insert version using scenes from the cutting room floor. I haven't seen the harder version and therefore cannot attest to the truth of these claims, but I can say that the softer version is just about perfect for the B-Fest crowd at three in the morning. This is undoubtedly the high point of the festival, as the peculiarities of the film industry manage to surprise and delight even the hardest of b-movie veterans.
Spawn of Slithis
This film begins at 4 a.m., which is (to my reckoning) the official time at which the Hours of Deep Hurting begin. I change my position in the theater so as to better stay awake, forsaking my comfy seat and propping up against the hard, ungiving wall.
Slithis, I note, stars a murderous Gill-man like monster who shares Hedorah's origins as a pollution by-product. This goop, according to a young scientist-type, is called "slithis" (ta-da!), and it comes. . . from . . . Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . .
As the film's ending credits roll, the polite applause of the conscious audience wakes me, and I just barely remember that the main character was a high-school journalism teacher playing at investigative reporter. I guess he got his monster.
Devil Girl From Mars
The titular Devil Girl touches down outside a rural village in Scotland to open a Twistee-Treat franchise. Her killer robot naturally doubles as a soft-serve ice cream dispenser. Various members of the cast spend a lot of time trying to get into DG's cone-shaped mobile Twistee Treat hut, only to be disappointed when they find the inside is actually a giant Lite-Brite.
Most of the audience seems bored by this one, but its ponderous pace and quiet performances seem perfectly suited for the 6 a.m. hour. I'm not thrilled out of my seat, but the quirky props, perky British actresses, and oddly inspired special effects are a balm to my weary soul. It's a mellow groove. Say that again with me:
mellow grooooove.
Airport '77
(insert Deep Purple tune here)
Plaaaaaane underwaaaaaaater
No longer in the sky
It's Jack Lemmon's turn to play Dirk Pitt in this, the penultimate
Airport film. As airborne disasters are now old hat, the latest doomed craft is a luxury-outfitted 747 that finds itself in (relatively) shallow water after an ill-fated hijack attempt. It's actually a pretty unremarkable disaster flick made remarkable by the elephant-gun-powered cast, including Jimmy Stewart, Christopher Lee, Gil Gerard, Brenda Vacarro, Joseph Cotten, George Kennedy, Darren McGavin, Kathleen Quinlan, and even Olivia de Havilland! None of them can save this film or its goofy laws of physics, especially since Stewart never even boards the plane. The only thing to do is to embrace it like an orphan child, or ... you know ... zzzzzzzzzzzz....
Clearly, it's time to get out of this auditorium for a while.
Scott and I take advantage of the breakfast break, braving the frigid campus for some actual hot protein. The Burger King is a mere mile away, and our trusty mini-van gets us there and back in time for the next movie.
Gavotte (short)
Everyone's favorite "short" film returns. (There just aren't many more jokes to make about this one, people.) See previous B-Fest diaries for a description, though I was amused by the shock people felt at the fact that it dragged on so. Marlowe sat behind me during this one, and through his complaints in the initial first minutes, I felt compelled to tell him, "Oh, it's just toying with you now, wearing away your resistance. Just wait -- it'll smack you around later."
I believe history proves me to be correct in this matter.
It turns out that "Gavotte" is a style of dance with origins in the French peasantry. The dance references are appropriate enough, as the next feature turns out to be:
The Forbidden Dance
Truth be told, this was one of my least favorite parts of the show. Yes, it was a cheesy '80s film with Sid Haig as a Brazilian shaman with bizarre powers who helps to save the rain forest at a dance contest. But at worst it bored me, and at best it made me feel vaguely uncomfortable. For my tastes, it dealt out too light a comic touch with some fairly serious topics, like sexual assault and coerced prostitution. Most of the audience seemed fairly taken with Haig, but I could have skipped
Forbidden Dance altogether.
The Beast of Yucca Flats
That would be Tor Johnson, in case you didn't know, and by this time I was slipping in and out of consciousness in minutes-long increments. Basically, "brilliant scientist" Johnson (ha!) is turned into a murderous monster during an atomic test. Tor wanders some suspiciously familiar countryside, killing the few people who wander into his path while a narrator drones on about the tragedies of wasted lives, the inner thoughts of the characters, and how the Phillies did last week. Falling asleep during this film doesn't require staying up all night watching other bad movies, but it sure makes it easy.
Fortress
You know you're at B-Fest when Jeffrey Combs' name in the credits elicits the largest cheer from the audience.
Fortress turns out to be one big dopey noisefest, in which Christopher Lambert (pronounce it "lahm-behrrr") fights against the future. Or something like that. Most of what I took from this movie was the metallic taste in my mouth inspired by the main method of punishment used in this dystopia: an internal explosive called "the Intestinator." Much like the explosive collars in
Deadlock, Intestinators can be made to explode by signal or by proximity detectors, which effectively traps the prisoners within a certain area. (Why there are also laser bars on the cell doors or even cells to begin with is a bit of a puzzler, but no matter.)
The film ends with a climactic gunfight pitting Lambert against a killer dump truck while his wife performs Lamaze breathing in the corner of a barn. Apparently the miracle of childbirth wasn't enough excitement for these filmmakers; they had to add monster machines and flying bullets to the mix while the kid was being born. Fortress ends, leaving an exhausted audience in its wake.
The addition of a microphone to B-Fest is a big plus, as everyone may hear that the schedule has changed. There is quite a bit of whining at the fact that the last two films have been switched, but I'm still convinced that the switch was a good thing. Ending on a movie as sedate as
Magnetic Monster would have been deadly.
H-Man
This 1958 Japanese sci-fi flick rolls along for about ten or twenty minutes before the film breaks, which is a shame. Not only was it lovely to behold in vibrant Tohoscope color, but it's one of the few films on the program I was really anxious to see. Sure, it's pretty slow at the beginning, but my understanding is that it picks up later on. Too bad.
Instead, we are treated to a selection of shorts, including a re-run of
Monkey Business. (Arg. There are moments when you definitely feel the projectionist toying with the audience, drunk with power.) As one of the monkeys plays electrician with a spotlight, you can hear the "shock the monkey jokes" ripple through the audience.
Following
Monkey Business is
TV Guide's Thinking About What We Watch, which presents us with a variety of slack-jawed children who must be told that American Indians (the PC phraseology of the time) no longer wear feathers or carry papooses upon their backs. Also, real cops are apparently much more boring than TV cops. Sunburst detergent, however, is quite popular among stereotypically gay teenagers. Or so we are led to believe.
Next up is Sterling Films'
The Man of Stone, a rather flat presentation of a 500-year old Bohemian legend regarding a golem who is brought to life to save the oppressed people from a tyrant. What does the hulking man of stone do with the tyrant? He pushes him out of the castle window. We needed a giant made from granite to do that?
Somewhat more lively but equally phony is the Em Gee classic
Courtesy Comes to Town, starring White Bread Billy and his sister, Pasty Jane. Billy and Jane (not their real names) agree to report on courtesy for their newspaper magnate father, who enjoys thinking up cruel situational jokes to play on his own kids. Not satisfied with making his progeny miserable, he also drags a couple of actual reporters in on the gag, and we all spend twenty minutes examining various social and workplace situations -- not once, but twice and even three times. Most commented upon by the audience is the older man who gropes a young girl who bumps into him, afterwards mentioning that he "enjoys being a gentleman." Bad touch, baaad touch!
The hurtful memories are partially washed away by an encore presentation of
The Wizard of Speed and Time.
We're lulled into a false sense of peace as the next film flickers to life before us.
Magnetic Monster
Ken Begg proclaims this to be a fun and intelligent piece of idea fiction, but for me it was the two-ton anvil that broke the audience's spirit. Thank Jabootu I was sitting behind Lodore, who motor-mouthed all the way through it. I think it might have been a form of speaking in tongues. Whatever you want to call it, the stream of profanity and hilarity that came forth from that woman just about saved my life. Bless her boots.
Monster begins as a quirky piece, sort of a cross between a
Twilight Zone episode and the original
Dragnet, but it has a strange habit of focusing on the domestic minutiae of the main character, Jeffrey Stewart, especially as pertains to his unborn child and bemusedly tolerant wife Connie. Disturbed that Mrs. Stewart has gained no weight in her fourth month of pregnancy, Jeff tries to force-feed her pancakes and sausage. Later in the film, we are allowed to watch as the happy couple constructs a budget that will allow them to afford a mortgage. Somewhere in there, Stewart spends some time saving the world from a radiation-bombarded piece of lint run amok.
The problem with
Magnetic Monster isn't so much the story as the fact that we must watch
every component of the story, with little of the boring stuff omitted from the on-screen action. There are a full five minutes of stock footage of planes refueling.
Thrill! as the machine maintenance man unspools the paper from inside the airline insurance vending machine! See him slowly... pull... out... each... sheet... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
No, I didn't actually fall asleep during this one, but parts of me wish that I had. Like my brain.
The Big Brawl
We're into the home stretch. The opening scenes of this lighthearted Jackie Chan romp are some of those magic moments of B-Fest synchronicity. Kristine DeBell, wide-eyed sweetheart of
Alice in Wonderland, reappears as Jackie's girlfriend. You can feel the audience perk up as they recognize her, and soon the room is alive with catcalls, hoots, applause, and laughter. And because Jackie Chan may well be the most entertaining man alive -- at least to the kinds of people who attend B-Fest -- that feeling doesn't stop at any point in the movie.
You can read our review of The Big Brawl on the main site, but I must mention a bit of anticipation the audience felt when DeBell began removing her clothing. "C'mon, guys," I pointed out. "It's not like she has anything you haven't seen before."
The house lights go up, and the great cleanup begins. With the floors scoured clean of wrappers and containers, the few remaining B-Festers take group pictures, say their goodbyes, and trudge blearily out into the snow.
Scott and I trundle our group into the mini-van for what feels like another four-hour drive, and, despite a tragic (but all too typical) error in piloting (that traffic circle on Golf/Emerson always gives me trouble), we eventually make it to Paul's place, where the loosely-connected Friends of Ken order pizza each year and try to remember just who we are and why we're here. I recall what seems like an hours-long conversation with George and Lodore about Italy, and the sounds of people watching still more movies, but mostly I remember the drive back to Ken's place and bundling myself into a sleeping bag, where blissful sleep finally overtook me.
Traditions broken, lessons learned
Clearly, B-Fest is becoming more and more popular an event, due in part to web sites like Stomp Tokyo and The Nation of Jabootu, which have been singing its praises for half a decade now. (Longer, of course, in Ken's case.) The fact that B-Fest sold out this year is a clear signal: seats will be harder to come by, and the people filling those seats will be more likely to occupy them for longer. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, so long as the festival organizers realize that B-Festers need more than one seat -- sitting knee-to-knee with 350 other people in a theater filled to capacity would be a wretchedly miserable experience. Capping attendance at about two-thirds of the theater's capacity is a good thing.
That the attendees of this year's event were of a more earnest bent was both a blessing and a curse. There was only one occurrence of the use of a laser pointer, which came on Saturday afternoon, which leads me to believe that it was a latecomer. Flashlights pointed at the screen also numbered mercifully few, which I attribute to the specific mention of that hateful practice in the program. But a higher number of enthusiastic b-movie fans means more people trying to be funny over the noise of their fellows, with few of them succeeding as well as they'd like. Five or six rows behind me, a trio of dullards spewed forth every rude, unfunny thought that came into their heads, and they were appreciated even less by the poor folks who were placed directly in front of them. There's something to be said for the curious novitiates, who sit in silent awe of the proceedings and slip away shortly after
Plan Nine from Outer Space.
Lest I sound like too much of a crotchety old fart: If the worst thing you can say about an event is that it's filled with enthusiastic attendees, you're in pretty good shape.
Conspicuous by its absence was a certain short called
What is Communism? This little bit of hysterical (and not "ha-ha" hysterical) anti-Communist propaganda is a B-Fest favorite, and it's not hard to see why -- with its McCarthyist doomsaying and bemusing slogans, the movie is extremely easy to mock. In today's post-USSR political climate, it seems overly paranoid and even quaint. But there has always been a pocket of resistance to this short, and the objections to the film held by these attendees (which I finally had explained to me in detail this year) are entirely understandable: there's something offensive about an audience that can be so glib when shown execution footage and aerial photographs of mass graves. At any rate, those who felt a hole left in the festival by the absence of
WIC? were assured that it will return next year. I may be one of those who stroll out to the lobby for a bit of conversation while it rolls.
The final film of the festival has traditionally been an energetic monster movie, usually a Godzilla movie or other Toho smash-fest. Unfortunately, none of these were available for this year's event and
The Big Brawl ended up taking its place. And so we discover that if you can't have giant monsters crushing an Asian metropolis, Jackie Chan kicking some ass can provide a passable substitute. The important thing: end on a high note.
I'd like to thank Andy Freeberg and the entire A&O team for making the festival such a pleasure to attend. Their hard work and negotiations with the various film distributors make the festival what it is. Also, much gratitude must be extended to
Mitch O'Connell, a professional illustrator who creates the B-Fest artwork each year, for providing me with an advance copy of the poster so that it could be included on the festival cups.
Did I say this recap was going to be brief? Well, it's still only half as long as
Ken's.
